


Better, Stronger, Faster

by Princess of Geeks (Princess)



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Angst, Episode Related, First Time, M/M, Season 1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-15
Updated: 2010-03-15
Packaged: 2017-10-08 00:41:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/70937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Princess/pseuds/Princess%20of%20Geeks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The robot versions of SG-1 from the episode "Tin Man" come to terms with their new life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Better, Stronger, Faster

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Green Grrl](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Green+Grrl).



> Thanks to betas ivorygates and tejas. Written for the 2007 Jack/Daniel Ficathon on Live Journal.

That very first ... day, though of course it in no way resembled a day, after the flesh-and-blood SG-1 had disappeared, heading home, Jack had drawn an artificial, perfectly formed breath, and turned to Harlan where he stood before the stargate. "So.... What's your first project?"

And Harlan had stumbled and stuttered in his delight at mapping one out for them. It involved some more of the dangerously rusted blow-off valves.

When that was done, a whole lot of messy, dirty hours later, Carter dusted her hands and turned to Jack and said, "Didn't we sort of promise to bury the stargate, sir?"

Jack just glared at her.

^^^^

Routine maintenance had been long deferred. There was a lot to do. They kept busy.

The hardest part of being a robot, Jack found, at least at first, was expecting to sleep and not sleeping. He didn't even get drowsy. And that was just ... wrong. And then, of course, was the expecting to eat and not ever getting hungry. And the lack of other basic human functions, which he simply did not carry on any more.

The thing was, he intellectually knew that he was a robot now. He even had mostly accepted that he was a robot. But he still _felt_ human. He felt just like himself, and so the constant reminders that he was not were jarring. He missed his human weaknesses. In the rusty, dank labyrinth of rooms and corridors and warehouses that was now home for the four of them, there was nothing resembling a kitchen, or running water of any kind, or plumbing for bathing or drinking or flushing toilets. Nothing to accommodate those kinds of human needs. Because they didn't have them.

Jack, in a way he concluded was very Daniel-like, especially missed the rituals that surrounded cooking and eating. He'd never thought much, before, about how they gave a rhythm to his day. How he used trips to the commissary for pie to stretch his legs or to break him through to a solution for a problem. He missed doing that. It was weird.

They were all here, with plenty of work so far. They were underground, in a place very like the SGC. But he missed all the everyday rituals. So, in the absence of sleeping and eating and bathing and dressing, Jack clung to courtesy and formality. And to hard work.

_It's home now. It's not like prison,_ Jack thought, once, early on, walking a corridor just to see with his eyes where it went, though he knew perfectly well it was the access corridor for the air pumps on five. _Don't start thinking like that. Don't even go there. _

^^^^

Daniel spent ... a while ... exploring the computers. He knew, actually, how long it was that he spent. Exactly. Down to the second. But he didn't focus on the number. He simply told himself that it was ... a while. His shiny new robot mind could, of course, calculate days and weeks down to a millisecond without trying, even without his conscious decision to do so, but it seemed frightening to think about the time that was passing for them in terms of Earth days or weeks. Especially since they didn't sleep. So without a sleep cycle, he found it just too odd to note that he'd been working on a given project for 82 hours and some change.

So, he rummaged around in Harlan's computer network, but he stopped trying to know the numbers that would quantify how much time was passing. He spent a vague while exploring the nodes for history, for maintenance, for design. He'd seat himself in one of the command chairs in a quiet location; usually level six, away from Harlan's main labs and the labs where they'd been created and their flesh-and-blood counterparts immobilized. He sat there on level six, in the strange eternal interior dusk, distant clanks and groans and pings of the old machinery for company, and scrolled through the computer databases, matching up what he'd been "bundled" with to what was in the collective memory of Harlan's doomed society of robots. The filtered air, the weight of dirt and rock above him, the subterranean smell of rust and damp, reminded him of the concrete bunker of the SGC. He found that oddly reassuring.

The human, top layer of his programming was indeed very seamlessly integrated with the accumulated layered knowledge of Harlan's world, and he instantly recognized everything he read. But somehow he still felt it was important to go over these things in real time. To see things with his own eyes, the way he always had. And so he lost track of time, intentionally. And he studied. That was his medication, his therapy, his escape. Like always.

After a few weeks, he started tuning in to the background chatter of the others. The radios they had been made with could be turned off entirely, but Daniel found it soothing to think with a backdrop of familiar voices. He found that Sam tended to talk to herself, even if she was working alone. And that Teal'c, left to his own devices, would hum. Sometimes one or the other of them would mute their broadcasts, but not often. He realized it was making him feel less lonely, and he realized that before he'd actually noticed the loneliness. But he kept working on the computers, studying, mostly alone. Jack didn't come around and give him any orders, and when the others needed help he gave it. But they all seemed to accept that he wanted to sit alone and study.

Harlan didn't have to nag the four of them about helping him. Teal'c and Jack, as soon as they finished one task, would jog to wherever Harlan was, and ask for the next repair project. The deferred maintenance Altair needed was scary. Harlan had needed help for a long time; Daniel really couldn't blame him for seizing the opportunity to create some companions when he'd been presented with the chance. Harlan couldn't leave this place, and he wanted to live. Yet, without help, he had been doomed. Now he had hope again. He was downright giddy with delight, and he worked harder than any of them, despite his age and girth.

Sam was drafted for maintenance and repair a bit more often than Daniel. At first, she spent a lot of time in the biology labs. The composition and function of the robot technology was by far the most advanced and fascinating thing this world contained. Sam was captivated by it. She would willingly drop whatever she was doing and help the others when asked, as Daniel always would, but she always gravitated back to those labs, which had once belonged to Hubbell himself. The robot system that the mysterious and long-dead scientist had created was elusively described and poorly documented. She was obsessed with learning how he'd managed to do it. Her experiments and reverse engineering were risky, elegant and logical, by turns, and sometimes all three at once. Sometimes she came to see Daniel when an anatomy experiment she'd run had gone awry. She'd show him how she'd marred or mauled herself, before getting Harlan to help her fix it. She and Daniel would have a good laugh over it, and then she'd go and get herself perfectly repaired again.

Daniel had to admit that Sam, true scientist that she was, seemed to be coping better than any of them with her new life. Despite her immersion in the military world, at heart Sam was an experimental physicist. The puzzle of the robot bodies was something she could happily study until she mastered it, even if it took decades, Daniel was pretty sure. Mentally, Sam was doing great. But emotionally, Daniel suspected, she was doing what he was doing: Burying herself in ideas, in science, in concepts.

One day, a day when Teal'c and Jack and Harlan were in a distant tunnel, repairing the roof, Sam had been silent for a while. When he took a break from his research, he drifted through the room where they'd first awakened, and he found her sitting there, staring at the ceiling, tugging gently at the hem of her black and silver shirt.

When she heard him, she turned to acknowledge him, then turned away again. After a moment she said, "You know, I really miss Dad, and Mark, and the girls... And I miss Janet Fraiser. So much." Daniel sat down beside her on the slab and put his hand on her shoulder. She was warm and soft. Just like she should be, just as if she were flesh and blood and not silicone and alloy.

"They're all going right on," Daniel said, matching her quiet tone. "That comforts me."

"Yeah...They're not missing us. Because we're still there." She turned to him, and he held her calm, sad blue gaze for a moment, and then dropped his own. He patted her shoulder again, and got up and walked away, out into the damp rusty corridor. He was glad she didn't bring up Sha're.

^^^^

Once the urgent failures had been mostly patched in the geothermal systems, and once Jack and Teal'c and Daniel and Harlan had installed the automated maintenance controls that Carter designed with Harlan's help, Jack had a sense of closure. Of duty done. It was not a good feeling.

There were other projects, other experiments to tackle, but he left Carter to take the lead on them if she wanted. If Harlan had an idea that needed to be planned and implemented. He backed off, and let Harlan deal with Carter, mostly. He always helped when asked, and he still kept fairly busy, but he took to wandering the corridors, and he took to climbing into the observation bubble at the far north end of the top level, and slowly cleaning a patch he could look through in order to glimpse the surface.

While he did that, he thought about fishing. Places he'd fished. Before. The Minnesota lake, Lake Michigan, oceans.

It took a long time to clean a spot on the inside of the small dome; the crystal surface was coated with decades of gunk that was harder to wash away than restaurant kitchen grease. Plus the static electricity and the chemical properties of the crystal made the dust and grime and gunk in the air bond to the dome's interior much, much better than any similar setup back on Earth. Jack didn't really want to know that, but he did. He understood the chemical bonding, the formulas, the whole shooting match. He could even discuss it with Carter, now, if he wanted to. But he didn't.

Once he'd laboriously shined a spot to look through, there wasn't much to see. The planetary surface outside had an atmosphere. Sort of. And it was prone to sand storms that made the Abydos storms look like April showers. When the storms did clear, the surface was mostly red dust. It looked much like photos Jack had seen of the surface of Mars.

Jack would stand there on tireless legs, on knees that never buckled, never twinged, and look out, and let his souped-up mind drift aimlessly, like an upended car spinning its wheels in the air. He wondered sometimes if this version of his mind would have been able to absorb the Ancient database, or if the lack of real human flesh would have made the download machine reject his body as it had rejected Teal'c's. Something else he'd never know.

^^^^

Sometimes, every 90 hours or so, Daniel would feel moved to go and lie down on his slab in that empty lab where he and the others had first awakened, feeling a little hysterically that he should be asleep. He would lie there with his eyes closed and think about meditating. His mind really wouldn't sink into that kind of tranquility. He had never been an expert at the practice, but he had tried it, and he knew what he was looking for when he did. And this mind wouldn't get close. It would dutifully slow down, but it would never really become still. He would lie there anyway.

He thought sometimes about asking Teal'c how he was doing with his similar efforts. Daniel had seen a small room on the third level that Teal'c had draped in red. Sometimes Teal'c would sit there, assuming at least the outward aspect of kel'no'reem. Daniel understood the impulse.

Daniel would lie still, eyes closed, and sometimes he would fantasize that Harlan could create people from thoughts, just as he had the ability to create people from flesh. He pretended that Harlan had the power to forge a living soul from his vivid mental template of pure yearning. He could build Sha're in his mind for Harlan, shape her from his own stored knowledge of their past, and animate her from his strength of purpose, from his drive to find her, save her. He pretended that Harlan could give him Sha're, and a new version of Skaara, as well. Surely his bitter regret and fierce clinging to his former self had that kind of power; that much potency to serve as a pattern, as his own living and transient flesh had had. Once, people had been created from breath and a bit of mud, right? Surely memory would work just as well.

Then he would laugh bitterly and wipe his wet eyes -- how had Harlan made that work -- tears? -- and he would curl up and sit, and then set his feet on the cold floor and walk away. He would find a terminal, and start learning again, matching what he knew to what he saw. Digging deeper and deeper, metaphorically speaking, into the guts of the place, of the people of doomed Altair, of the place the Tau'ri eventually had named PX3-989. He was enough of a poet to like the name Altair better. Earth had come up with the same word, almost, to name a star in the Milky Way. It was a nice name. He was learning a lot. He was occupying his mind.

It was the best he could do.

^^^^

Every now and then, Daniel had noticed, Jack would disappear for hours on end, and cut off his radio, then, eventually, reappear. Daniel didn't like to pry, as they were all having enough trouble adjusting, in their own way, but one day he cut off his own radio, and followed Jack. Jack wasn't going up to the dome or to the main computer console, where Harlan hung out when there wasn't a pressing problem. Sometimes Carter or Daniel would sit and chat with him there, and Teal'c would sit and listen.

Daniel followed Jack to an area near the central stairway on five, and Daniel saw that Jack had cleared out a small closet, and somewhere, somehow, found, or made, some cushions and a lamp, and had lined himself a little nest. Jack turned, when he was twelve feet from the open door, and cleared his throat. He didn't quite glare at Daniel.

"Do you mind?" he said, and he didn't sound gruff, only neutral and firm.

"Sorry," Daniel said, and turned away. He missed his lab, he missed his apartment, he missed his artifacts and his books and his clothes. He missed his tent on Abydos at the oasis, and he missed Kasuf's house in the city. But none of that mattered now.

^^^^

Daniel couldn't stop thinking about Teal'c and his red draped refuge to try to hang on to his practice of kel'no'reem. He couldn't stop thinking about Jack, looking out that window. He leaned his chin in his hand. He never got tired of learning, but he'd come to the end of several major sections of database. He was a scholar by training, and to scholarship he had reverted. But it was time to stand up, and look around. Time to move.

^^^^

Daniel followed Jack's tuneless whistling and found him on the top level, looking out the little patch of window he'd cleared.

Daniel said, "There you are! Come with me." Jack frowned, but without a word he turned and followed Daniel back down the stairs and along the featureless concrete corridors to the lower levels. When Daniel started jogging, then running, Jack matched his speed. It was easy now to accept that he could run like that.

Daniel ran and Jack followed, a long way down. All the way down and across, to a big warehouse-like room on two. Jack knew without really trying to know that the room was a store room, and had once housed spare parts for the ventilation system, and that the parts that sat in here in giant packing cases had been slowly used up, and the cases recycled, and eventually Harlan and Wallace had created a replacement part that was simpler and more quickly replicatible, and this room had sat empty and unneeded for centuries. He winced as the encyclopedic thoughts faded. He really didn't think he could ever get used to thinking in centuries.

Daniel had walked to the center of the big room, and turned and spread his arms. "What do you think?"

Jack looked around. There was padding on the floor now. It looked like a boxing ring, without the ring. Daniel, without waiting for an answer, stepped over to the wall by the door and picked up some fabric from a pile. He began wrapping his hand in what looked like an Ace bandage. Then he picked up a second one and started wrapping the other hand.

"I've been dying to try this, and now that we've got the groundwater problem solved on four and the ventilation maintenance mostly handled, we have time." Daniel was holding out some of the long stringy material for Jack, apparently assuming he was going to wrap his hands, as well.

"You've got to be kidding," Jack said, looking at the puffy bulges over Daniel's knuckles, a poor imitation of boxing gloves.

"Not at all. I've finally got the equipment, if you will, to hold up my end of a hand-to-hand encounter with you and maybe even with Teal'c. Now I need the skills, and you can teach me. You have no idea how much fun this is going to be."

"For you, maybe."

"Come on, Jack. Look at it this way. You can finally kick my ass without guilt." Daniel looked eager, like a puppy.

Jack slowly started wrapping his knuckles, memories of learning to box, learning defense training, unspooling dutifully. "Well, since you put it that way...." It might be a way to not be bored. And it was a reminder that it was kind of nice to have knees again. Knees couldn't make up for not ever being able to eat praline pecan pie with maple sugar sauce again, but they were something.

^^^^

Daniel thought of the biology labs as Sam's now. Not Hubbell's. Harlan had even started calling them that -- Sam's labs. She mostly spent her time there, and so when Daniel went looking for her, that's where he looked. If she were off investigating something or fixing something, she would leave a note there with a stick drawing of herself as the signature. Teal'c was often with her. Daniel tended to spend time talking with Harlan when they weren't all working, but Jack, Daniel noticed, spent more time alone than any of them. Every 50 hours or so, they'd go to Daniel's gym and box, or spar, or practice hand to hand moves. Sometimes Sam joined them, but usually it was just the guys.

^^^^

A whole section of wiring on four had failed, one of the many mushroom factor projects that had resulted from the long-neglected groundwater leak in that part of the complex, and it took weeks for Teal'c and Jack to pull new wiring and connect everything when they finished patching up the emergencies and started working on overhauling individual major systems. Just rerouting all the essential functions around the short had taken Carter and Harlan two days, and now, Carter went around during the actual rewiring muttering to herself about new subroutines and failsafes and backup systems.

Jack was spinning a piece of conduit like a cheerleader's baton, although it weighed 10.14 kilos, and waiting for Carter to tell him that the section she'd just run continuity tests on was okay and that they could move on to the next section. Teal'c was waiting patiently, his back against the big iron archway.

"Why'd you agree to it, T?" Jack said, suddenly, not even aware he was about to ask.

"Why did my counterpart agree to let Harlan begin again on a new robot, after the first one malfunctioned so severely?"

"Yeah." Jack spun the conduit, around and around, switching hands, and then back the other direction. Like a yoyo, but better. Heavier.

"I am unsure," Teal'c said. He paused. "I can only guess that the first Teal'c felt it appropriate that the team be complete."

"Huh," Jack said. Teal'c looked thoughtful and he opened his mouth to add something, but then Carter spoke, telling them everything was all clear and could they move on the next junction box.

Jack said, "Roger that," and slung the conduit over his shoulders and followed Teal'c into the dark.

^^^^

When a memory of Sha're occurred to Daniel, as often happened, he had a new mantra. He was kind of proud of how simple it was. He would think of Sha're, a stab of pain, and he would close his eyes and say firmly to himself, "Oh, that's for the other Daniel," and then redirect his thoughts. It even mostly worked. Mostly.

 

^^^^

Daniel sat, bent forward, with his forehead resting on the console next to the computer keyboard. It was an experiment. He'd sat there like that for a few minutes. Seventeen and a half minutes.

_But who's counting._

Sometimes, in his old life, he would fall asleep at his desk and wake up like that. Usually with a cold mug of coffee at his elbow. He thought he missed coffee. But he couldn't be sure. He sat up carefully and rubbed his eyes, though they didn't really feel scratchy. He was pretty sure he missed coffee, but he didn't miss his glasses. At all. He got up, and started walking. Down the corridors, up the clattering stairs. He didn't try to move quietly. When he got to Jack's little room, the door was ajar. The light was off in there. Daniel walked closer and rapped on the jamb.

"Hello," he said.

"What," Jack answered, but he didn't get up. He was lying flat on his stomach on what looked for all the world like an Air Force regulation issue sleeping bag, his chin propped on his hands, staring into the corner. Daniel didn't answer. He slowly edged into the tiny room, knelt, then lay down on his side, close beside Jack. When Jack didn't move or speak, Daniel stretched his arm across Jack's spine, and pushed his face against the firm underside of Jack's arm, mashing his nose a little against the triceps muscle. He felt Jack exhale, slow and loud. Then they were quiet.

^^^^

Thirteen Altair days after the first time Daniel came to snuggle, he came to do the same thing a second time. Jack didn't really give a rat's ass that it was thirteen days, which would have been nineteen Earth days, and not twelve Altair days or eight Altair days, but it was, in fact not a couple of weeks or a few days but thirteen Altair days. But when Daniel showed up, Jack was glad to see him, and he did give a rat's ass about that.

Jack was taking a break, just lying there, thinking. Mostly he was thinking about fishing. And he was also thinking about how it used to feel to walk a quiet perimeter on a starry cool night, a MP-5 cradled in his elbow like a bulky security blanket. He kind of bounced back and forth between the memories, toggling the scenes when other, unwanted memories tried to muscle in. He'd stuffed a pillow under his head and was on his side, facing away from the door. Daniel came strolling up, and he didn't even say a word this time before he barged in. He simply lay down and spooned up behind Jack and put his lips against Jack's neck. Jack squeezed his eyes shut. They lay there like that for a while. Jack felt Daniel breathing and Jack tried not to wonder why a breathing function had been deemed advisable for these bodies. He couldn't stop himself from doing the wondering, apparently, but he really didn't care. Jack heard a slight rustle, and felt Daniel shift, and then Daniel rested his open hand softly on Jack's ribs. His face was warm, and it felt good up against Jack's nape.

^^^^

Jack didn't try to count the intervals between the snuggle sessions with Daniel. But he stopped turning his radio off until he got into the room and lay down. Often, Daniel would appear at his room shortly after he did.

One day they lay there in comfortable silence for a while. Then Daniel said, "Have you tried masturbating yet?"

Jack raised his eyebrows, involuntarily, but didn't move otherwise. "Now that's a stupid question, isn't it?"

Daniel let that pass, intent on his line of thought. "It's just interesting to me that we can't eat, or shit, or pee, or sweat, but we can cry and spit and have something that resembles an orgasm but without ejaculate."

"Why, Doctor Jackson, what fascinating observations." Jack didn't want to discuss this. He didn't see the point. But hearing Daniel say those clinical words -- orgasm, ejaculate -- made his dick twitch. He mentally shook his head at himself. He was pathetic. Sexually deprived. Daniel was quiet again for a while. Jack could hear him thinking.

"I guess our eyeballs and the insides of our mouths need some kind of lubrication or oil, if you will. I'll have to ask Sam if she's analyzed that liquid; is the spit the same as the tears? Or is it chemically different...."

"You should definitely leave that to Carter. Why ask me about it anyway."

"Because it's not Sam I'm using for a teddy bear." Daniel moved his arm further around Jack's middle and hugged him tighter. Now Jack could feel that Daniel was getting hard, and that made him start to get hard.

"So this is your idea of foreplay?" Daniel outright laughed at that, and Jack felt strangely triumphant at pulling that surprised, glorious sound from Daniel. "From colonel to teddy bear. I feel so flattered." Daniel chuckled, his amusement tailing off into a comfortable silence.

"So," Jack said. "Do you think about robot science when you jerk off?"

"No, of course not," Daniel said, sounding genuinely surprised. "I think about you."

"Oh," Jack said.

^^^^

"You know," Daniel said, wanting to speak although he still hadn't caught his breath, and his hands wouldn't quite close all the way. They were fumbling and weak, as his skeleton and nervous system had turned to jello, his skin to velvet, under Jack's hands, under Jack's mouth. "You know," he tried again, "there is one good thing about coming without coming."

"No mess, no fuss."

"Yeah," Daniel said, and he felt Jack's smile as Jack eased his chin up and nudged Daniel's cheekbone to line their mouths up. Jack kissed him again, deeply, intently. "Ungh," Daniel said, and he had to cut short the kiss to breathe some more.

^^^^

Daniel tended to get all clinical about what was really very simple. There was love, and there was sex, and there was comfort, and now Jack had all three in one convenient package. Daniel could keep his speculation about bodily fluids to himself, thank you very much.

Comfort made Jack expansive, when it didn't make him maudlin. He tried to keep a tight rein on both. He'd always been an "actions speak louder than words" kind of guy, and so he would remain.

But one time, after coming with his head mashed against Daniel's shoulder, the taste of Daniel's skin on his tongue, he waited until their breathing slowed. He said, "They took our lives, you know. Those were the lives that were really ours."

Daniel didn't answer. He held Jack tighter, and pressed his cheek to Jack's and hid his eyes. He lay there, body to body with Jack, in silence, for a long time.

Eventually they got up, and got dressed, and went about Harlan's business.

^^^^

"This was a really good idea, sir, thank you," Carter said, beaming at Jack across the square table. Teal'c was neatly sorting the poker chips into colors, and then stacking them into piles. Daniel was absently shuffling and reshuffling the deck. Jack was standing behind his chair, after stretching. It seemed like the thing to do when you'd been sitting for what might as well have been an all-night poker game. But he didn't really feel stiff. Which was good, when you thought about it. He tried not to. He leaned on the back of his chair and smiled at Carter.

"Might as well keep testing your replicator machine with something we can get some fun out of." Carter's smile brightened.

"You, you. You are still here? Sitting around? Eh!" Harlan paused in the door, then bustled through to the computer console in the center of the room, and did something to the monitors, and then bustled out again. Jack ignored him.

Carter stretched her hands out in front of her, linking her fingers and pressing out with the palms, and glanced around at the three of them. "I think I'll take a walk and then go see what else I can create. Since the colors on the cards came through so well, I'm tempted to try for some paisley fabric. I'm pretty sick of this sweat suit."

"It is functional, and no more drab than the team uniforms of the SGC," Teal'c said.

"Yeah, but see, when I was off duty I did occasionally like to wear a dress. You know, change clothes just for the fun of it."

"I see," Teal'c said. He finished stacking the chips and folded his hands. "This is a typical tradition of women on Earth."

"Absolutely," Carter said, and smiled at him.

Jack mused that despite the fact that poker wasn't the same without beer, he had had fun, and he wasn't going to quibble at anything Carter wanted to do with her fancy machinery at this point.

Daniel snapped the cards and shuffled once more, looking down at his hands. "Did you tell Jack about your other idea?"

Carter smiled, that secret, tiny smile. "Not yet."

"And?" Jack said, still holding on the back of his chair and looking receptive. Carter took a deep breath and met his eyes.

"I'm pretty sure I know how Harlan's former companions designed their portable batteries."

"Didn't they just use them to walk off and, you know, die?"

"Yes. They had no interest in a cell that would last longer than a few hours, and they had no interest in recharging them, or making them light enough to use for any extended period of time. But I think I've solved all those issues."

"You have."

"Yes. I'm pretty sure I have."

"Batteries. Which would let us leave the tunnels here."

"Yes."

She and Jack stared at each other, and Daniel and Teal'c watched them, silent. Jack drawled, "Well, I guess we're going on a field trip, then. Aren't we."

It was weird, Jack thought, his glance flitting from face to serious face, that no one knew exactly what to say to that.

^^^^

The surface was hot and arid. Just as Jack had imagined it would be, all those endless hours as he had looked out from the little smudged window he had cleaned. Carter had matched his preferred style of sunglasses perfectly, and then she had made some for Daniel and Teal'c and herself. She was getting to be quite the ace with the replication technology. Harlan had pretty much blown a gasket when he'd found out she'd been working on the portable batteries. But eventually he'd settled down. Daniel had speculated he was afraid they would commit suicide, or leave him forever.

He'd absolutely refused to go with them on this little walkabout, and had refused the modifications Carter had offered that would allow her to place a new power supply in his chest, too. She had gone ahead and made one for him, but he wouldn't hear of having it installed.

The day they went to the surface for the first time, he sulked and refused to watch them climb the stairs and muscle the hatch open. They had emerged from the iron tube one at a time, and then Jack trudged across the surface, almost dizzy with the experiencing of, after all this time, a horizon, a sky. It was a pleasant vertigo. After an hour or so, they found themselves at the top of a rise. The landscape was the same in all directions -- red sand, red dunes, red rubble-covered hills. Teal'c stood next to Jack. The sky was a dull orange. Today it was cloudless, but Jack knew well how the clouds would cover the sky, darkening high noon, storming for days. Other times the clouds would float pleasantly, like the popcorn cumulus at home. He'd always enjoyed watching the weather, and so he did on this world too. Today, he was sure, there was no danger of a storm. It felt strange to be using his own accumulated new knowledge, and not something given to him, factory installed, as it were, by Harlan. It felt … good.

^^^^

Jack was beautiful. He would snort, and distract Daniel with kisses or tickles when Daniel tried to tell him that, but he was. Lying in the yellow glow of the little lamp, running careful warm hands over Jack's skin, Daniel smiled his appreciation and didn't bother saying it any more.

He was taking his time, this time, just feeling. The silky skin inside the point of Jack's hipbone. The cushiony belly, just about the only soft spot on his entire rangy body. The springy pubic hair. The way his warm, firm shaft filled Daniel's palm. The way the head was so much hotter than the rest of Jack's length. He didn't let his fingers linger there, tempting though it always was. Because there was more skin to cover. A firm thigh, the rise of Jack's kneecap, the sharp shinbone. His ankles, the round mysterious bones so close to the surface. The arches of his feet. Daniel lingered there, massaging the soles, making Jack grunt with pleasure and put his hands over his face.

Then Daniel took his time smoothing his back way up Jack's body, easing past his genitals this time to trace his ribs, his sternum, his collar bones. Then Daniel planted his hands on either side of Jack's face and switched over to exploring with his lips. He kissed Jack's eyebrows, the delicate shells of his eyelids, the bridge of his nose. Jack went very still, even his restless hands. He lay there, eyes closed, feeling Daniel's mouth. Daniel smiled as he kissed. When he found Jack's mouth, Jack remained still for a bit, letting Daniel lick gently along his lips, then press his tongue to Jack's teeth and taste the corners of his mouth. But Jack couldn't stay still for long when Daniel kissed him. He kissed Daniel back, and they both smiled when their enthusiasm made silly teen-age smacking sounds, and they kept kissing -- gentle brief kisses, longer deeper ones.

Jack gave up on lying there and letting Daniel pet him. His arms came around Daniel's back and they rolled, still kissing. Jack's weight on him was a warm embrace in and of itself. Jack kissed his neck, moving down along its length, but Daniel thought of something they hadn't done yet... a position he'd never tried.

"Wait," he murmured, and he pulled on Jack's shoulders. Jack hesitated, and looked up, meeting his eyes. "Up," Daniel said, still murmuring. When Jack looked confused, Daniel said, "Over me. Kneel over me. So I can get you in my mouth, from here."

Jack's eyes got deep and inward, and Daniel knew he'd hit a nerve in a good way. Slowly, holding his gaze, his eyes narrowing at the corner, Jack complied. He leaned on the wall, the ropy muscles standing out in his forearms, and spread his knees wide over Daniel's chest. He hitched forward until his erection was bobbing over Daniel's mouth. Daniel raised his head and opened his mouth and tasted, and then drew Jack's cock in, sucking and licking. He couldn't see Jack's face any more, which was a shame, but it was a nice trade off. He loved the way Jack's cock pressed against his tongue, loved the way he could cup Jack's ass from this angle.

He moved, and pressed with his hands, encouraging Jack to move. Jack moaned, and rocked into him. Daniel squeezed his eyes shut. It tasted good, it was definitely Jack -- a scent he knew even here, even so changed. Their bodies were subtly different in some ways, radically different in others, but Jack still smelled like Jack. Jack panted and then moaned and then gently shook under Daniel's hands, under Daniel's mouth, as his climax escalated, peaked and slowly ebbed. Daniel held him in his mouth and waited until Jack's breath evened out, until his chest had stopped heaving and he was breathing gently again. He tried not to think about what he was missing; what taste he would never get, now. He tried not to mourn. Not here. Not now.

_Hey, I don't get coffee either,_ he said to himself, as he always did - one of his new mantras, his new rituals. Laughter was always the best medicine. Something else Jack had taught him. He waited, feeling skin, feeling warmth, loving how Jack filled his mouth. Jack moaned, a happy sound, and pulled gently away. Daniel licked his lips. Jack was moving down, slowly, clumsily, to lie sloppily on top of Daniel and press his face into Daniel's shoulder. Daniel held him tight and breathed him in.

^^^^

"That went well," Jack said, his voice muffled as he pulled one of the new black T shirts over his head and then tugged at the hem, settling it. Carter was putting away her leads and sensors and tests. The newest version of the portable batteries was everything she'd hoped it would be. Jack had never doubted it, but it was possible that she had.

She observed, "We've got 48 hours at the outside. At that point we're really cutting it close." They gazes caught and held. She knew, and he knew, though neither of them had said it yet, that they were going to do it. Going to go out there. Going to resume their careers.

From the first time they had used the new batteries to visit the surface, it had been on Jack's mind, and he knew without asking that it had been on hers.

Jack said, "Funny how we still measure things in Earth days." He folded his hands over a knee, linking his fingers, and looked at a corner of the room, behind Carter.

"Base code, huh."

"Yeah."

She smiled at him, and looked down, carefully coiling a power cord. The smile lingered at the corners of her mouth. "Carter," he began, but that seemed wrong. "Sam," he started, and then he stopped, because it was so extremely odd to call her by her first name. It went against every grain he had. She looked up, surprised, but she looked receptive. He paused, studying her face. He liked to think that she and Teal'c had fully crash tested these new bodies in the same way he and Daniel had. Sometimes their radios were silent at the same times, sometimes for a couple of hours. But that might just be wishful thinking. On the other hand, she'd never acted jealous. Or offended. Or anything really. But he hoped that they were finding something of what he'd found with Daniel. He wouldn't ask. She wouldn't volunteer.

He studied her. She looked content. She'd made the best of things. As they all had. "You know," he started again, abandoning trying to use her name in some meaningful way, "there's no way to do mission proposals here, and there's no dialing protocol for what planet to try next."

She smiled again. "I have a few ideas about that, sir. If you want to hear them."

"Spill it," Jack said, and he grinned at her. She'd called him "sir," like she used to do back on Earth, before. When they had a routine. When they were saving the planet. He still, he had to admit, kinda liked it. He grinned a little wider. Sam grinned back.

^^^^

Another day of red dust and harsh sunlight. Getting familiar. The batteries were working well. They'd tested them to failure, now. They knew exactly what to expect.

Jack turned to Teal'c. "I'd like to be out here for a sunset, or a sunrise."

"We could build a campfire," Daniel said from a few feet away. Jack couldn't see his eyes, but his voice sounded pleased.

Teal'c said, "Now that we are sure the batteries are functional, have you considered using our stargate?"

Jack looked at him for a long moment. "I don't think that's entirely up to me, anymore, if you take my meaning, but, yes." He looked away again, staring at the horizon, and folded his arms. He could feel Carter's attention, Daniel's curiosity. "Now that you mention it; Yes, Teal'c. I have."

finis


End file.
